Amy's Baby Breanna

Hello everyone. My name is Breanna and I arrived in the world today at 3:32 pm. I weighed 8 lbs. 13 oz. and I am 20" tall. I made my mom wait an extra long time for my arrival, but I am worth the wait. I can hardly wait to meet my Aunt Tonya, Uncle Daniel, Aunt Becky and Uncle Tom. Since I won't be able to see them for awhile I will have my Grandma send them pictures.

This is me and my mom!

A close-up of me!

Me and my Great Grandma!

It's a girl!

Amy just had her baby today... born at 3:32 this afternoon. Her name is Breanna Marie... pictures and details to follow!

New Hair Style

I did this to my hair about a week ago... just felt like doing something a little different and funky. In about 6 weeks it will grow out enough to chop off again... not sure if I'll dye it again or not. Perhaps red or orange next - although about then I'll be doing job interviews and might go for a slightly more conventional look.

Random News

Things have been mildly eventful around here. After being gone for work we came back home to find that the bike we hadn't brought with us - our hardtail (2002 Giant XTC SE 1) was stolen from our locked basement. We've reported to the police and I talked to our tenant insurance people, but apparently we're only covered for about 1/4 of what that bike's worth... which is equivalent to our deductible. Thank goodness we took our other bikes with us! You can bet were getting extra insurance for our other bikes this week! ... so if anyone sees this bike around Kingston please let me know - it's pretty rare and distinctive.

In other news... my sister still hasn't had her baby. She was due on Aug. 17th so it should be any day now. Last I heard the name was going to be Breanna Marie if it's a girl and Chad (Joseph or Wayne) if it's a boy. I'll post pictures and info as I get it. Tom's back in TO this week, but next week heads up to Baker Lake for a couple of weeks. My thesis is coming along... by the end of the week I will be done all of the small last details... just still waiting for corrections for my third paper to come back. I guess that's all the traffic around here these days!

Depot Lake

We went hiking at Depot Lake on the weekend. We originally found the place because there's a geocache listed there. Unfortunately, while I had the location of the trailhead, I forgot to download the coordinates for the actual cache. We did have a pretty nice hike anyway though and will be heading back out again for more hiking and maybe some kayaking.

Resolute Revisited

I finally got around to putting some pictures on from working in Nunavut this summer. We were based out of Resolute, but got to fly all over Cornwallis Island and western Devon Island in a helicopter. Our pilot was a frenchman named Claude Noel so we were thinking of telling the niece and nephews that we were flying around with Father Christmas.

This is Tom at the Pond Inlet airport on our way up to Resolute.

The next three pictures are from the archaeological dig site at Resolute. These structures date back to the late 1800s (if I remember correctly) and are constructed from large whale bones.

The sea ice was really neat and I ended up taking quite a few pictures of it. This is from west of Resolute looking towards the mainland.

We had quite a few fog days . This was a rather mild one where fog covered the channel to Devon Island, but we were still able to work on Cornwallis. Near the end of the project we were completely grounded for several days in a row. I shot this picture of Tom at a bulk sample site on Devon Island as he was watching the helicopter take off.

Just a shot taken on northern Devon Island with some of the neat colours of the various rock, debris, and vegetation. This is one of the most heavily vegetated areas we came across... meaning more moss & lichen, some

This is the edge of the glacier on Devon Island with a sea-ice filled fjord in the background.

Fjord on Devon Island.

I bet this would make a pretty spectacular waterfall when the water is flowing... but for now it's an ice-covered perched lake.

Delta emptying into the channel between Cornwallis and Devon Island, from the Devon Island side.

Cracks in the sea ice on our last trip back to Resolute from Devon Island. The ice disappeared surprisingly fast with a little help from some warm weather and several days of strong north winds.

Back on Cornwallis. We were hiking along rivers taking stream samples. This is a picture of me right after sinking into the mud up to my knees. Fortunately I've had experience walking through quick sand in northern Ontario and had the technique down to walk through it without losing my rubber boots. I'm just glad it wasn't any deeper otherwise I would have had to belly slither out of it. My boots weighed a ton by the time I got out though... at least it amused the other people on my crew - they couldn't stop laughing!

Here's Tom checking out a plane wreck we came across on the Tundra. We were hiking along another stream and saw it. We spent a bit of time checking it out, and just as we were heading back Claude came buzzing up behind us in the helicopter to do an emergency run back to Resolute because the fog was rolling in.